22 February 2018 5:26 PM

Treachery and the Cold War

First of all a profound thank you to the contributor who, several years ago, sent me a DVD of ‘Traitor’, a 1971 BBC TV play in which the great John Le Mesurier plays (superbly) against type as Adrian Harris, a Philby figure, being interviewed by Western journalists in his Moscow home. I have forgotten, alas, who it was who sent it, but I am very grateful.

Perhaps it was the small nostalgic Cold War storm that has broken round Jeremy Corbyn that finally moved me to watch this relic of another age, the real confrontation between superpowers which threw a shadow of mistrust across the planet. It is a Dennis Potter work before he was (in my view disastrously) allowed to indulge himself, a spare 60 minutes of dialogue in a confined space with a few actors, with occasional flashbacks. I can just remember watching it on a black and white set. Where? Presumably at the University of York in mid-October 1971, which as far as I know was the only time it was ever shown. I remembered almost nothing of it, except Le Mesurier snarling ‘diddums, diddums!’ at some soppy bourgeois criticism of his ruthlessness, a sentiment I would have shared at the time, as this was the middle of my Bolshevik period. (It’s the same with the Radio 4 Book at Bedtime serialisation of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. I would claim to have read this, perhaps Joyce’s most accessible work, 50 years ago. I recall enjoying and appreciating it. But I now remember nothing of it, as I listen, rapt, to the beautiful, almost musical reading on the radio.

The TV play opens with Le Mesurier/Harris alone in his Moscow apartment, struggling not to polish off the already two-thirds-empty whisky bottle on the table. His hands shake as the doorbell rings and he attempts to pour a generous measure back into the bottle, mopping up the wasted whisky with a copy of Pravda. A group of reporters , some with cameras, have been given permission to interview the famous traitor, and are grumpy because they have had to struggle up the stairs with their cameras, because of course the lifts are broken (unlikely in the sort of elite block where a defector would have lived, but never mind).

When they finally arrive, it all goes wrong immediately, as Harris/Le Mesurier welcomes them as ‘comrades’ in Russian, as a sort of joke, and they stiffly reject this bonhomie, being (as it seems) genuinely appalled by Harris’s betrayal of his country and the cause of freedom, and his rush into the arms of a tyranny. A ghastly tragedy then unrolls, as a steadily drunker Harris rages with his interrogators about how what he did was justified, excoriating their safe liberal pieties in favour of decisive, supposedly noble action. There is a very small amount of swearing, far more shocking at the time. The play’s age is also shown by the way that Vietnam and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague (the first still going on at that time, the second very recent) feature, almost as shorthand, in the arguments between the reporters and the traitor. Increasingly, Harris becomes a pathetic figure, rather than a dangerous or wicked one.

In dry, understated colour, almost black and white, it sticks to an older BBC tradition and assumes our intelligence. It pits the old Etonian Philby figure, in his sparse Moscow flat, against a group of Western journalists, but especially one of them, a clever Wykehamist played by Jack Hedley, a fine actor whose interesting face and civilised voice I had forgotten but who was once a feature of many screen dramas.

The Wykehamist is Harris’s intellectual equal if not superior. They batter each other with quotations from Wordsworth and Blake, and sneer (by implication and subtly) at each other’s schools. I may have got the whole thing wrong, but it seems to me to be the classic unresolvable conundrum (unresolvable on Earth, anyway) of power and its uses.

The flashbacks cut both ways. Some, a triumph of the archivists, showed much longer clips of the Jarrow Hunger March than I have ever seen before, as well as lingering shots of industrial slums from the Wigan Pier era, as an unseen choir sings ‘Jerusalem’, fit to break your heart that a great and wealthy empire could have allowed little children to grow up in such circumstances. Though I now know, as I wouldn’t have done then, that the Jarrow March was explicitly non-Communist, and its organisers strove to keep the Communists out of it.

These memories supposedly explain the treachery, as do a series of vignettes of Harris’s childhood, darkened by a distant, overbearing intellectual father and a barbaric boarding school where his stammer is cruelly mocked and punished.

But just as it all seems to be going one way, there are contrasting scenes, of a real betrayal, a Russian who defects to try to warn London of Harris's treachery, and Harris’s boundlessly cynical manoeuvres to ensure that this defector is murdered before he can name him.

As I say, an intelligent, thoughtful, concentrated drama, not relying on effects or a great expenditure of money, resonating in the mind long afterwards. I won’t say how it ends, in case you get the chance to see it.

And it comes from the era just before Jeremy Corbyn was , we are told, approached by some person at the Czechoslovak Embassy, as it then was (like the country it represented, the hideous Brezhnev-modernist building has now been partitioned between Czechs and Slovaks) . Does this amount to anything? Well, I shall have more to say about this at the weekend, as I have had my own contacts with the Czechoslovak Embassy in London and (as I believe) the Czechoslovak secret state in Prague, in the 1970s and the 1980s . One of the people I dealt with at that embassy was definitely a spy, as he was expelled from Britain on those grounds soon after I met him. One of the people I dealt with in Prague was almost certainly some sort of secret policeman, as nothing else really explains his behaviour. What does this make me?

Well, as always, it depends on the circumstances and the details. I will point out here, as I always do, that spies, like journalists, claim expenses and need to justify them. But, unlike journalists, they can tell stories about what they have been up to, which it is very hard for anyone to check. So it could be that their stories are taller. If only more people had read Graham Greene's masterpiece 'Our Man in Havana', we would have avoided so many mistakes, not least the second Iraq war.

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Michael Williamson:

‘He didn’t have the courage to oppose it directly but chose to take a large salary and work surreptitiously . I consider that to be the work of a coward.’

This is skewed thinking.

Why would he oppose it directly when he could be more effective as a spy? Who would choose to be less effective than they could be? I’m unsure if the salary was all that large.

As for cowardice, I’m unsure if that applies, as Philby would know his position could have been blown any day by a defector coming the other way. Indeed, that’s what Volkov was going to do: buy his way to the West by trading Philby’s name, but the offer landed on Philby’s desk, so Volkov never got his deal. That he ran that risk was hardly cowardice, but those in the USSR who risked torture and murder for spilling secrets to the British were certainly braver than him.

If caught, and the British couldn’t flip him back to use him, then Philby would have been looking at a long sentence. If he’d been properly caught then a prosecution would have been the least useful outcome.

However, a man like Philby took all the advantages of being a citizen of the UK, a private education and a well paid job and gave away secrets crucial to this country’s continuing existence and had a lot of people murdered. He didn’t have the courage to oppose it directly but chose to take a large salary and work surreptitiously . I consider that to be the work of a coward.

Whether he was a ‘communist true believer’ or not I don’t know, whether he enjoyed his his final time in the USSR is open to speculation and is dubious. Nether less he was he was, by any standard, a traitor just as he would have been a traitor if he’d chosen, as a citizen in the USSR, to behave in the same way. That’s the only way states can work.

‘It is quite possible to oppose the state and even campaign against it but, once that becomes hostile action, it is treason.’

I do take your point. Its’s not the attitude of the state to the citizen which bothers me: I understand that and why it is what it is. I don’t understand what about my position is idealistic.

What I don’t get – what I find sickly and a bit gross – is the attitude of to the state held by many citizens. Too many think of the state in worshipful, religious terms, where the state replaces a god; where flags replace altars and ‘national anthems’ replace hymns.

(On a smaller scale, for example, football fans do the same thing again. Badges replace gods, stadia replace churches and terrace-songs replace hymns, etc.)
Patriotism is groupthink; ‘loyalty’ in the context means obedience.

You say one can oppose the state up to the point the actions become ‘hostile’. ‘Hostile’ is an interesting choice of word. I would replace ‘hostile’ with ‘effective’.

It’s the attitude of the plebmass which annoys me, the idea that there shouldn’t be any Philby types – such as the character mentioned – because nobody should even *think* that way.

If being able to act on a matter of conscience, if being able to base ones behaviour on what one truly believes, is a freedom persons want for *themselves*, then they just have to shut up whining about ‘traitors’ like Philby.

He was a commie ‘true-believer’, who acted on conscience, from sincerely-held beliefs, and didn’t let stupid ideas about ‘loyalty’ or ‘patriotism’ derail his mind.

I think you can renounce your citizenship however, without taking another citizenship but you would become a stateless person. We’ve just withdrawn citizenship from the ‘freedom fighters’ who went to Syria, surely it can work both ways?

Treason is a bit of a catch-all offence, given rather bad name by Henry VIII, which did indeed prevent individuals acting on their own conscience as Sir Thomas Moore discovered to his cost. It is quite possible to oppose the state and even campaign against it but, once that becomes hostile action, it is treason.

Michael Williamson..."This country, indeed all countries, assume and insist that citizenship means loyalty and the only way round that is to relinquish your citizenship."

That's a modern day fairy tale, Michael, told, once upon a time, when it contained an element of truth.

The West today is riddled with *known* and identifiable hostile enemies, foreign and indigenous, who openly declare their hatred for our way of life or wish to retaliate for our actions against their countrymen and whose prime objective is to wreak havoc and destroy our way of life.
However, the authorities and judges in our courts - rather than incarcerating or deporting them, *enforce our* tolerance of them by protecting *their* civil rights and rights to citizenship and protection under that same law.

'This country, indeed all countries, assume and insist that citizenship means loyalty and the only way round that is to relinquish your citizenship.'

I think it would be quite a task to abandon citizenship; I'm unsure if the state would allow it. I think the only way to relinquish your citizenship would be to take citizenship with another state. I might be wrong about that.

If persons cannot act on their conscience then you have a true tyranny, where everyone is 'loyal' (which just means 'obedient') to and worships the state. This sugary idea about 'loyalty' to a state is gross. It's a form of religious worship, just without the supernatural bits. The desire for in-group loyalty and out-group hostility is created and maintained by the state, using flags and 'national anthems' and all the other drivel many persons go for.

Humans should think for themselves, not like herd animals, bleating and mooing their way over a cliff in the name of 'loyalty' and 'patriotism' and the rest.

Of course you may think whatever thoughts you want, that is not against the law well, not yet anyway. However, if you translate those thoughts into actions, the state will take a very dim view, you can no longer be executed for such actions but you would certainly be looking at a long prison sentence. This country, indeed all countries, assume and insist that citizenship means loyalty and the only way round that is to relinquish your citizenship.

The alternative reality I inhabit is the reality of events observed through my own eyes and ears, Michael, as opposed to the indoctrinating interpretations of those who would have me believe otherwise. Of course it's ridiculous, it doesn't relate to events according to the Times or the BBC.

How, then, was the Soviet Union doing anything different to destabilise anything that the West wasn't doing - wasn't it the West, through Yeltsin, that destabilised The USSR and wasn't it the Germans and USA that destabilised the British Empire?
Or didn't that happen in the universe that you inhabit?

'Any British national who plots against this country for a foreign power is, ipso facto, committing a treasonable act and becomes a traitor. That may seem a bit far-reaching but it’s the only way I can think of that it could work.'

The problem there is the auto-assumption that an accident of birth should determine a person's conscience. I'm having none of that. I will think whatever thoughts I want. The state will not determine to what or whom I am loyal.

I don’t know what alternative reality you inhabit but your post must be the most ridiculous ever published here. The Soviet Union was dedicated to destabilising the West and what we are seeing now is the disorganised detritus of their evil regime still causing havoc.

Without those 'infamous' Harris's, Philby's, Burgess's, Houghton's and Gee's etc., the despotic architects of the 'New World Order' would have succeeded in subjugating the entire planet by now and its/our freedoms would be history, over, done and dusted.

Those 'infamous traitors' helped to create that 'balance of power' which, for most of my long and secure life, held back that force which now runs amok, throughout the world, creating mass death and destruction in many nations and continents

Funny how the very well-documented pro-Soviet pasts of many New Labour figures never excited much commentary in even the Tory media. Then again, neither did the Trotskyist communist roots of most of the early leaders of the Neoconservative movement. And since I'm in a whataboutery mood, what about Mrs T (or was it David Owen?) giving Ceausescu a gong? The same media also remain curiously silent about the late Mr Mandela's support for Soviet Communism. For whatever reason the neo-Liberal establishment clearly view Corbyn as more of a threat than any of these folk.

Any British national who plots against this country for a foreign power is, ipso facto, committing a treasonable act and becomes a traitor. That may seem a bit far-reaching but it’s the only way I can think of that it could work. The fact that they were always against this country is irrelevant, the only way round it would be to renounce one’s citizenship unfortunately, having done that, the individual would no longer be of any interest to the then Soviet Union.

Our attitude to treason is ambivalent, our own countrymen who are guilty of it are vile traitors, citizens of other countries who offer classified material to us are sensitive souls who have discovered the truth.

I have my doubts if Harold 'Kim' Philby was ever a communist ; he was enjoying the double adventurous life that it was bringing him and that most of his friends many staying loyal to him even after he fled to Moscow and his grand betrayal all revealed. After many years languishing in the communist capital on a salary paid by his Russian masters that many working men in Britain would have thought high, he said the only things he missed about Britain apart from a few friends were Colmans mustard and Lea & Perrin's sauce.

'For those of your readers who can't wait until the weekend to read more about soviet-era-shenanigans I can recommend - A spy among friends: Philby and the great betrayl by Ben Mcintyre.'

I'm familiar with that book. Philby was on the wrong side. He took the side of what was demonstrably an evil empire. The facts, however, remain what they are: he took that side before before he left Cambridge, was an agent for Moscow in Austria and in Spain - where he posed as a journalist - and entered British Intelligence as a penetration agent years later. He was never on the side of the British to begin with, so I find it difficult to conclude he betrayed this country. How is he a traitor if he never switched sides? He only ever pretended to be one of the boys.

I am not defending his actions, he sent men and women to their (no doubt) hideous deaths, including Konstantin Volkov and his wife, after Volkov tried to flip in Turkey, and he did it - let me repeat - for an evil empire.

This is my suspicion: Philby's name is dirt, really, because he made so many humans look stupid, starting with Harold Macmillan, who said, in Parliament: 'I have no reason to conclude that Mr Philby has at anytime betrayed the interests of this country.' (At least he said 'this' and not the sickly 'his'.)

In addition, he hurt and emabarrassed the 'establishment' because the assumption was that nobody with Philby's background would be batting for the other team.

'Don't be a fool, man! Philby's not a traitor, he can't be. I was at school with his father! I know his people!. Etc..

The defence of a country should probably be anchored to something a bit more robust than school-ties and family connections, but such is the way of the those from the top drawers. Philby made an entire *way of thinking* look foolish. This must have embarrassed many persons, and that's why the fact he was never on the side of the British doesn't really get discussed. He's just a 'traitor'.

You do not make it clear which particular intelligence service you trust less than politicians, but that is of no great concern as they all appear, to a greater or lesser extent, beholden to those who pay their salaries, or, in the case of America, as we have seen of late, where they come and go at the whim of 'he who must be obeyed'.

I'm sure there is some built-in view that the intelligence services in, for example, Albania, are well above New Zealand or Iceland in terms of levels of distrust.

Is there any guidance available as to the 'trustability' of either group in this country that have been the subject of close scrutiny or is it tucked away somewhere in Greek social media?

"This is a future which if we blunder into it might not be very pretty."

Indeed, but surely we've already blundered into a present, which going on views expressed here for a decade or more, is hardly pretty. Perhaps we're on the way to a future where 'prettiness', like beauty, is purely in the eye of the beholder.

I vaguely remember some words from our present Prime Minister, when she appeared at the door of No.10 following her election as party leader, that suggested she would be taking us into a fairer society. Of course, it might turn out that this Corbyn chap actually does what he says he's going to do, which for some will be a huge surprise, and for others a ruddy disaster, unless it does away with the present Tory Party...

As well as the Czech file there now seem to be CIA files referring to Corbyns Latin American activities.No doubt there are also Stasi and KGB files.Not bad for an obscure backbencher on the Labour Left. .Does any of this matter?. Not to millennial snowflakes apparently.However I think the rest of us would actually like more information on a man who aspires to be Prime Minister.It seems obvious that a Corbyn government would not be a normal government having normal relations with Britain's existing allies or Britains media and financial institutions.Chris Mullens novel and TV series A Very British Coup seems to be ever more pertinent..This is a future which if we blunder into it might not be very pretty.

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